This week’s theme: Return to the Scene of the Crime

Act 1: Hyperlink

Last week This American Life Live! was beamed to theaters. Paul was a review.

Act 2: I remember

Paul was unstuck in time. While riding the train home he blinked and was back in Bethlehem at Christmas. Not bible Bethlehem, Bethlehem, Pa. He was visiting his sister and together they were looking for a gift for their mother. The small shops were filled with tree ornaments, statues, and candlesticks. Lori fancied a teapot with a hand painted chicken on it. Paul inhaled some fake snow and sneezed.

He was in Holcomb Kansas. A place even Kansans call ‘out there.’ He walked into Hartman’s Café and was suddenly on the moon. Not the moon moon, but the firebombed ruins of Dresden which resembled a moonscape. Kurt Vonnegut almost always mentioned this city in the books he wrote. Even in an offhanded manner. Such as in Slapstick, the former President of the United States, Dr. Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, living on the Island of Green Death, or Manhattan, is given a Dresden candlestick. He dies the next day. So it goes.

As a blog, Paul was subscribing to Vonnegut’s ideas of time not being a continuous line, but always was and always is being. The past is still happening in the present. You can try this by scrolling down or reading any archived post. And so on.

Paul blinked in time with gunshots. Lori said “I remember when on my birthdays you had to do whatever I said. Like get me a yogurt.”

Paul remembered repeating himself often. He found truth in that repetition. As in the gravity of one event that sets off a chain reaction. A firebomb for Vonnegut. Kansas for Capote. Playing “I remember” with Lori to fill in an absent father.  

Paul was a sprinkles packet melting in a childportioned yogurt. Red, blue, green waves.